The rest of the day I spent indulging myself in fleeting fantasies about a future as some sort of scholar. Once I had actually read the card, I realized that I'd have to wait another five years before I could show up. Maybe I could run my luck at helping them set up the thing, but currently, I didn't have a way to get to the address they gave me. The card just read "In the middle of the Aerdal-adjacent woods." I'd heard rumors about that forest. A lot of adventurers come back in from quests that lie on the outskirts, and they return with stories of horror. A beast coming out of the trees, and continuous screams heard but not seen, it was the stuff of nightmares. Even if I found a carriage to take me to the outskirts, I wouldn't survive the journey to the academy that didn't even exist yet.
For the time being, I had to find a way to deal with Windbreaker. On the way back I ran into the pebble propagandists, and I brought them over to my side. They received a plea deal, reducing their sentence to community service which would be fulfilled by acting as my eyes and ears into Prymdor nightlife. The first night passed and I sent them off to corners of the neighborhood asking them to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity. I went to sleep that night and had a dream I couldn't describe.
I was walking towards an academy, presumably the one I'd just been invited to. There was a collection of other students at my side, some of them had recognizable faces. I walked right past the current prince of Melantia. I couldn't control my body, my mind was drifting along as if I were a spectator to an event I was in. I walked into a large room filled with seats. Time passed by like a carriage on the road, I couldn't keep an ounce of focus. There was some muttering in the back of my head, words I couldn't make out. I caught sounds here and there, fleeting melodies of information that I couldn't retain. I sat in the chair and just watched a circumstance unfold, and as I finally closed my eyes to end this undue imprisonment I found myself in a new hellish environment.
The sky was tainted red like a murder of some heavenly body stained everything the eye could see with its blood. I looked down after gazing at the oncoming storm to find nothing but chaos surrounding me. I was sat in the same chair, but the auditorium I had placed myself in was reduced to nothing but rubble. The same students who I had walked with just moments before were either lying on the ground or fighting for their lives. Fighting for their lives against what? A yellow bolt continually slipped past me, I only caught glimpses of this villainous figure which sought to ruin the futures of many. I finally caught a clear view of this agile creature, and I saw that it was no creature. I recognized it as one of the students who I was walking with just before. A shy, timid girl with hair the same color as the sun, oddly spiky to boot. She was surrounded by this odd glare, it didn't resemble the sun the same way her hair did. No, the glare that I saw was the same one that confronted me on a stormy night, the one that showed up unannounced to try and scare me away. It took delight in the screams of man, you could say its whole purpose was to strike fear in us. I was no coward, and the next second I was rushing towards this figure. I knew I could take her on, I just needed to think faster. I needed to look for the outline, find the vision of a future that hadn't happened just yet. A single moment of knowledge is all it would take, and there it was.
My shining light.
I awoke with my fist stretched like I had just hit someone. What the hell was that? Why was I having a dream about something that wasn't supposed to happen for half a decade? Who were the other students there, and why was the prince of Melantia there? No, it made sense that he was there. If they were looking for kids with potential, he would likely be the first stop. What didn't line up was the progression of events. Sure, accidents happen, but these were people who invited the best of the best. Am I to believe that they don't have the ability to keep their own students under control? Should I even accept their invitation if they didn't have enough resources to uphold their promises? I'd rather believe that what I had just seen was just a dream and that it would stay that way, but every instinct within me was screaming that I would be ignoring a clear omen if I allowed such naivete to guide my thinking. There wasn't any worth in thinking about this now, I had to get up and go about the rest of my day. My life was not given to me so I could spend it contemplating on an unknown future while refusing to move.
The gal was sleeping in the bed next to mine, when did she even get here? I hadn't seen her at all the night before, but I heard her talking with Chief Rayner for a good hour at the least. I only caught one or two sentences but she was mad about something that had happened to me. Did she break the silence on our incident? I needed to make my way out of this base as soon as I possibly could if that was the case. No, if Chief Rayner knew about the attack on me she'd have mobilized other public servants for some sort of revenge operation. The fact that I hadn't at the least been confronted about it yet meant the truth had still eluded her. I couldn't trust that she would never find out though, and so I had to make haste in dispatching the ones who orchestrated the ambush.
I opened the door to find my convicts, all three of them.
"What did you find out? You must've gotten something."
"Boy, do we? What a night man. When you told us to keep watch I thought we'd just stay out and enjoy ourselves while finding absolutely nothing, but you must have a real lead this time."
"I always have real leads."
"Yeah, sure. Can we come in?"
"No, I don't want the Chief to know that I sent you guys out to do this. She'd have my head on the nearest pike if she ever caught wind."
"The Chief?"
"So, what do you have for me."
I started walking down the street to where the markets were. We needed to be masked in a larger crowd.
"So Mark was out on the town last night right around here, the markets. Now usually everything is closed down, there's nothing on the stands, but when he got down here he saw some candles lit around the middle stand right there."
He pointed to the stand right in front of the fountain.
"He saw four people. One of them was behind the stand, they were selling something. The other three were right in front of the stand so he couldn't see what it was, but it gave off this weird glow. It was purple and green, I'll tell you I had never seen those two colors together before."
"You saw them?"
"Yeah, we were all together."
"Didn't I tell you to watch over different parts of the neighborhood?"
"Well none of us took you seriously, Flynn. Ever since you gave that big speech about justice we took you for some kind of lunatic. Anyways, we're watching this sale of something happen when suddenly this idiot Reem trips over his own feet. He falls face first onto the ground, and of course, they heard that. They all turned around to face us and I saw two things. First, they were all wearing cloaks so we couldn't see any part of them. Second, that thing that was glowing was some kind of small ball. The one in the middle held it in his right hand, and the glow was coming from inside of it. It peeked out through these little holes in the side, I couldn't quite see them."
"What happened after Reem fell?"
"Well, they started walking towards us. They told us that they had a few questions, asked if our parents were around. We knew that this was the kind of stuff shady people do when we catch them in the act, so we all made a break for it back up the street. They chased us, and eventually, the one on the right caught up. Just as they were about to grab Mark, I dived into him. BAM! Tackled him straight to the ground, I heard him grunt, and I took the opportunity to continue running. After only a second, the other two had gotten to the one I knocked down, but they didn't continue to chase after us. They picked him up and left immediately, he must've been hurt pretty bad. Get this: As they ran off, I saw a little piece of paper fall out of one of their cloaks. I rushed up to grab it before they could take it back, but they didn't even look back at us."
"A piece of paper? Do you still have it?"
"Yeah man, you can take it."
He handed me the slip of paper. It was crumpled up and half-wet, but the writing on it was clear.
"Listen, I don't know what you've gotten into now but I don't want to run like that again. We'll do some simple stuff for you if you need it, but I'm not gonna be your muscle. Capisce?"
"You'll know if I need you."
"Great. See you around, Flynn."
I looked back at the card while they were walking away.
Next Kingfall meeting is on Drenadora in a sewer intersection underneath where the royal pathway and Reddle's road meet
Kingfall.
Now that's a good name.